Literacy Boost Indonesia: MEMBACA Project

In 2014, Save the Children began its Literacy Boost program in 15 schools in Kupang district on West Timor Island, implementing both teacher-focused and community interventions. This program is MEMBACA (Making Early Matter through Books and Community Action). This report examines the result of a learner background survey and reading assessment conducted in April – May 2016 in Kupang. This survey and reading assessment covered 432 second grade students in 15 intervention schools located in 3 sub-districts and 15 comparison schools in 5 sub-districts in Kupang District. The MEMBACA program includes teacher training, community reading activities, and age-appropriate local language material creation to support emergent literacy skills among early-grade children. These skills include, letter awareness, single word reading of most used words, reading fluency, reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. As part of MEMBACA, learners are periodically assessed in each of these skills through an adaptable assessment tool to inform programming and estimate program impact. The data gathered from these schools is analyzed to present a snapshot of the emergent literacy skills of grade 2 learners in these schools and to inform the adaptation of SC’s MEMBACA program to this context.